


only this

by MagpieMinx (CardinalFox)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Imperial Academy, Porn with Feelings, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 03:18:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11842860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CardinalFox/pseuds/MagpieMinx
Summary: "I wish we had more time. I love you."Steve Trevor, Wonder Woman (2017)





	only this

**Author's Note:**

  * For [disorderedorder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/disorderedorder/gifts).
  * Inspired by [nothing more](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11532963) by [disorderedorder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/disorderedorder/pseuds/disorderedorder). 



There was never any question which academy campus he would be going to after basic training; the son of Brendol Hux belonged in only one place, even if he had taken two years longer to get there than anyone else.  The richest, most prestigious, the academy where they made the officers who would lead the Order, rebirth the Empire, become it’s heroes and rulers.  With this end in mind, Arkanis was also the most competitive, the most brutal campus of them all.  Most recruits who made it to the Arkanis academy were the ones who had already mastered many of the skills they were supposed to be “taught” while they were there.  He was no different, but he understood what skill mastery really meant: an edge over the other cadets.  The superiors of the Academy would cut anyone who was unable to keep up, so prior skills could mean the difference between assignment or relegation to the Stormtrooper battalions.  

The knowledge of how easy it was to be cut from the ranks of the academy spread quickly those first months, rendering the remaining students more cutthroat and more ruthless.  Sabotage was technically against the rules, but it was still rampant.  The logic was that eliminating more cadets would give one a better chance at making it through, but Armitage knew better.  Commandant Hux and Grand Admiral Sloane cared nothing for the numbers of those who graduated, only that they had truly found the cream of the crop.  Someone else’s leaving did not guarantee one’s ability to stay.  It was a fact that he was excruciatingly aware of, particularly since his father shouted it at him nearly every night.

The cohort dwindled that first year, dropping from over a thousand cadets to a little less than eight hundred.  During the first day of orientation, there had been too many cadets and too few seats.  Rather than fight for a seat, Armitage had chosen to sit on the floor, already bored and trying to occupy himself enough not to hear his father’s commencement speech.  It wouldn’t have been difficult to obtain a seat, not when he was fifteen to most of the other cadets’ thirteen years of age.  He was bigger, stronger, could have easily pushed for one and won, but that would have implied a degree of care that he had no desire to start his reputation with.

He had few friends in the Academy, but dozens of contacts, most of whom only associated with him because he was the only one who was adept at procuring forbidden goods.  Cigarettes were a favorite, alcohol another, credit chips and account numbers of high ranking officials and copies of old term papers, answer keys to exams and system codes for grades.  His prices were high, but so was demand, and many of the cadets were desperate.  It hardly mattered whether they were desperate for something to take the edge off the stress or if they were desperate to stay at the Academy.  They were desperate, so they paid, and there the relationship ended.  He shared his secrets with no one.

It was not until third-year flight training that he met someone worth risking his father’s anger for, worth breaking his own promise not to get involved with anyone at the Academy, platonically or otherwise.  He had noticed her before, wondered where she got that peculiar air of innocuous honesty and how the hell it had survived this long.  He didn’t speak to her until the day he purposely allowed himself to be shot down in the flight simulator, an event that ended in a fatal crash-landing on the surface of the planet below.  The instructor had been less than pleased and called him up in front of the rest of the class to explain himself.

He’d done it because he had no intention of pursuing becoming a pilot despite having record breaking marks in flight training.  That was no way to open a conversation however, so when he’d found himself standing next to the honest looking girl, he’d asked her if she found the simulator boring.  He’d been unable to remember her ranking in the training, and she had been hesitant to answer him at first, but then she’d admitted that she was ranked last, and that she struggled with the dogfights.  Her honesty had been refreshing, and he had flashed her one of his rare smiles when he said that he could help her, if she wanted to improve.

Except that she hadn’t responded the way he thought she would, replying instead that she would rather be stationed aboard a Destroyer rather than coming and going on a TIE.  He’d snorted and told her that a ship the size of a small city was no safer than a TIE fighter, contrary to popular belief.  Still, a friendship was born.  They ate together, helped one another, and during those rare minutes they had to themselves, they talked about their lives before the Academy, before basic training.  He’d told her about more than he ever intended, his mother, his father, the way he’d purposely failed placement tests to put him two years behind where his father had wanted him to be.  

He had explained that it was one of the few ways that he had of rebelling against his father, the way the Commandant constantly tried to mold him into a younger version of Brendol Hux.  He’d told her of his dreams too, of leading the Order as a general or major general, something that had seemed all too easy to do when they were walking together after curfew in the gardens used by the science major botany specialists for growing their plants.

And then suddenly things had begun to change.  He started having occasional affairs with other cadets that had graduated to a period of borderline hedonism after he discovered that sex made for both an interesting payment for forbidden goods and was a powerful motivator in itself.  He had extended his explorations into the city too, often having his pick of partners.  He’d been learning, or more accurately, practicing, but then his only friend had started to pull away.  He never shared the details of his weekend exploits, and yet offers for walks were suddenly turned down, and she seemed to vanish during mealtimes.  

It had been surprisingly lonely without her, his sweet, honest little friend, and he found himself missing her fiercely.  Identifying this information spurred him on to obtaining a bottle of scotch and a box of Corellian truffles and bringing these along to her room as a peace offering.  He’d invited her to the rooftop observatory, and though she had hesitated, she’d accepted.  One hundred hours found them both on the roof, sipping scotch to warm themselves and sharing the truffles.  He had tried to act as normal as possible, but she kept looking at him, and he had a feeling that he didn’t seem as unconcerned as he was pretending to be.

He’d put her coat over his shoulders and they’d continued sitting for a while when, tipsy or possibly drunk, she’d confessed that she was feeling something she couldn’t name.  He had a guess what it might be, but he had no way of knowing if he was right or not.  Instead of telling her what she felt, he told her to just let it come to her naturally, and she’d gone quiet as they continued watching the stars until the sky grew grey with the coming dawn.  He’d tucked the last of the truffles into the pocket of his coat and sent her back to her room with them.

A few weeks later, the third year gala marking the midpoint between orientation and graduation was approaching, and he’d asked her to the event.  The atmosphere around the academy was almost relaxed as the extended tour of Coruscant approached, cadets chattering excitedly about fashion, trends in food and drink, and the city nightlife more than tests and grades.  Armitage’s remaining roommates were painstakingly going over their dress uniforms, but Armitage had put his uniform away and instead pulled out a deep charcoal grey suit complete with waistcoat, pinning a First Order insignia to the lapel and wearing a blood red tie.

She had outshone him, both figuratively and literally, in a one-shouldered dress in a pale, seafoam green decorated with tiny gemstones stitched into the fabrics that sparkled in the light.  She wore a circlet too, decorated with roses and rosebuds, the flowers sparkling in the light like the little gems on her dress.  Though simpler than the dresses of most of the other girls, the overall effect was elegant and made her look like a princess.

She was beautiful and he told her so after they started dancing, after he had offered her the glass of champagne in his hand and she had refused it.  Dancing with her now was different, more meaningful than the times they had practiced when she had taken her etiquette class.  She was more practiced at the steps now, moved gracefully through them, the hem of her dress fanning out occasionally as they spun across the dance floor.  He had distracted her from the way he was drinking her in with his eyes by making fun of his dorm mate’s paisley cape which was three seasons out of date.  He claimed that he didn’t have the heart to tell the boy that, but he compared his dorm mate to a snobby senator and kept her laughing.

The party had stretched on into the early hours of the morning, though most of the cadets dispersed into different areas of the city, them included.  What was different about them was that they didn’t disappear into one of the city’s many nightclubs.  Instead, he led her to a particular fountain that he had taken notice of earlier in the week, a wide, flat one with lights and jets of water that could be programmed to respond to music.  He’d shown her how to do it first, and they’d spent twenty minutes choosing patterns and colors, and then he’d pulled her into the fountain after him, catching her in the circle of his arm and whirling her through the lights and the dancing water.  The city police had shouted at them, but he had ignored them and spun them through another set of jets, soaking them both.

“You’re insufferable,” she’d said, her dress soaked with water and heavy, hair dripping onto her face and neck and shoulders.  

“And you’d still follow me to hell and back, wouldn’t you?” he’d responded, lifting her and spinning her around a few times before setting her back on her spindly little heels.

“Yeah,” she’d said, looking up at him with bright, warm eyes, the ring of truth in her words, burning them into his memory, “I would.”

Now he sits in the open window and smokes another cigarette, blowing the resulting smoke out and into the rain.  It continues falling as he thinks about how quiet the Academy has become recently as finals approach.  It’s not just the impending doom of tests, it’s also the fact that some eight hundred students haven’t made the cut and have been shunted back into the ‘trooper battalions.  There are a little less than two hundred students left in his cohort, a figure he’d heard his father and Rae discussing in the past week or so.  It was less than they’d hoped would come out of this particular batch of cadets, but they also appear to feel confident that only the best of the best are left.

_ The best of the best _ , they’d said, and then the Commandant had turned on him and snapped at him for underperformance.  His rank at the top of the class meant less than nothing, not when his  _ father _ knew he was capable of more.  Which was the truth, admittedly; he was capable of more and he knew it, but he saw no reason to waste more of his energy and efforts on a place where he had already achieved as much as could be achieved.  He’d already gotten what he wanted out of the Academy: assignment to the  _ Finalizer _ .  The ship hadn’t even been launched yet and wouldn’t until next week, but the Order was finishing assigning personnel to her and he was expected to leave in the morning.  He’d maintained the number one spot in his class from his first week, and it had been agreed that he didn’t need to take the final tests.

He wasn’t the only one who wasn’t going to be taking the final tests for the many subjects they’d all studied at the Academy after receiving an assignment, he was simply the only one who had been assigned to the Finalizer.  And yet with assignments rolling in and cadets leaving the Academy,  _ she _ hasn’t asked if he’s received one yet.

_ ‘Maybe,’ _ he thinks,  _ ‘it’s because she hasn’t gotten one yet.’ _  He takes a drag on his cigarette as he considers this, tongues at this probable truth the same way he tongues at the filter of his cigarette.  He blows another plume of smoke out the window.

“I’ve been assigned,” he says at last, tapping his lit cigarette against the window frame, shaking the ash off the end and watching it fall to the ground below. “The new ship, the  _ Finalizer _ .” 

“Wow,” she says, and in the corner of his eye, she lays the book she’d been studying in her lap. “That’s...impressive.”   
  
“I heard you were in talks for the  _ Eclipse _ ,” he says, extending a little more information for her, hoping she’ll say something else, “I’ve heard of it. It’s a good station, befitting of ambitious officers. Like you.”    
  
“But it’s not the  _ Finalizer _ .”

He frowns, unsure how to interpret this statement, delivered so flatly, and turns toward her. “No, it’s not.”

She picks her book back up, flipping the page and pretending to be reading.  Her eyes are moving too quickly for it to be more than a skim, if she’s absorbing anything at all. “Is that all you’ve got to say?”

Her voice wavers as she says that, provoking an unusual reaction from him, and he hears the anger in his own tone when he says, “What am I supposed to say? That I’ll have you transferred to the  _ Finalizer _ ?  You know that that’s against the rules.”

“You’ve never been opposed to rule-breaking in the past,” she responds, the words sharp as they slice through the air,  “You won’t even miss me, will you?” 

The accusation cuts him unexpectedly deep, leaves him floundering for a response.  He closes his mouth, closes his eyes and focuses on breathing, trying to keep his head clear.  There’s a geyser of words trying to erupt from his chest, up through his throat, out of his mouth, but he knows exactly how to contain it.  Years of dealing with his father have taught him the value of silence, and how little vomiting up denials and reasons and arguments helps.

He weighs what he really wants to say carefully as he lifts his cigarette to his lips, takes a pull and tugs the collar of his uniform loose.  He looks at her, makes full eye contact, trying to pour his sincerity into that exchange alone, then says, “Of course I’ll miss you. You realize you were the only good thing that ever happened to me in all my time at the Academy, don’t you?”

“You’re not acting like it, Armitage,” she shoots back, “Was any of this real for you?  Anything?”  She slams her book shut in a fit of temper, throwing it down on the foot of her bed, kicking her blankets after it.

He watches this display of emotion with mixed feelings of his own, wondering if she really believes that this could have meant nothing to him.  Didn’t he defy his father by being consistently friendly with anyone?  But then she hadn’t been like their classmates.  She was just as ambitious without the same kind of ruthlessness most here had; there was something about her that made him want to be honest.

“You were,” he says quietly, feeling a sense of regret.  A litany of shoulds pass through his mind,  _ ‘Should have told her earlier, shouldn’t have gotten so close in the first place, shouldn’t have hurt her like this.’ _

“There you go with the past tense again,” she snaps, abruptly turning away from him and then rubbing at her face with the sleeve of her top.

“Because it has to be past tense now!  Don’t you get it?”  He says it louder than he meant to, shouting it because he hasn’t been able to confront this yet on his own, the reality that after tonight they’re unlikely to ever be together like this again.

“No, I don’t!  Explain it to me, then!” she yells back, and as he gets up from the window seat, she springs up from her bed.

He crosses the space between them in a single long stride, saying, “It has to be because we need to let each other go, move on with our lives!”  He grabs her by the shoulders, shaking her lightly, “The Order is more than you, than me, than my father!  You’re getting what you always wanted, aren’t you happy?”

“I’m not getting you!” she nearly shrieks, her hands suddenly on his chest and shoving him before he can react.  He stumbles backwards into her desk, the back of her chair digging into his hip as he catches himself with his hands.  He rights himself, but when he turns back to her, she has her back to him, her hands covering her face, shaking.

It takes him a moment to recover from his shock, to realize that she’s  _ crying _ because she doesn’t want to be separated from him, because she doesn’t want to lose him.  The fact that she wants to keep him is significant enough, but the sight of her trembling shoulders and back is too much and tears at something deep in his chest.  He reaches for her instinctively, resting his hands on her shoulders, but then she shrugs him off almost violently.

“You’re more than the Order to me,” she chokes out, her voice raw, agonized, “You’re the stars and the moons and every living, breathing thing in this whole galaxy to me.  I don’t want to lose you because I don’t know how to live in this galaxy without you.”

“Even if you’d know where I was?” he asks, regretting the question the moment he says it because it’s stupid.  Knowing where he is isn’t the problem, it’s not being together, and there’s nothing he can do or say to fix that.

“Don’t you see?  That makes it worse, because even if I do know where you are, I can’t come and see you like you’re doing with me right now.  Officers rarely transfer from the ship they intern on because they become indispensable.  I can’t just up and leave.  Knowing where you’d be all the time… it would remind me that we’d always miss each other, no matter what we did.”

Her voice doesn’t break, but his heart does, confronted with the truth of it like this.  He wonders if her ability to be honest with herself is the reason he wants to be honest with her too, and it’s honesty that makes him reach for her a second time, trying to connect.

“Come here,” he says, settling a hand on her shoulder and turning her, gently tugging her back towards himself, “Come here, look at me.”

She doesn’t fight him now, just comes to him meekly, her face full of hurt, the skin around her eyes red from her rubbing at it with the stiff fabric of her sleeves.  He feels his own eyes burning with tears, but she won’t look up at him.  Her gaze is directed somewhere lower, off to the side, so he places his fingers under her chin, gently tips her head up.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m sorry, but you know there’s nothing I can do.”  He hates admitting to powerlessness of any kind, but this is the honesty she deserves, that he’s wanted to give her all along.  “Some things can’t be changed, even if I make it look like they can be.”

He cups the side of her face in his hand, brushing his thumb along her jaw, looking down into her face.  Her eyes are pained, but they’re searching too, moving over his face, looking for something, or maybe just taking him in.  There’s fear there too, like she thinks this might be the last chance she has, and he feels an ache in his chest because it’s like she somehow already knows.  Tomorrow he’ll be gone and she’ll be left behind and he might very well never see her again.

He pushes the thought away, unable to handle the way it makes his stomach twist, leaning in to kiss her instead.  Her lips are soft and warm under his, though still, maybe with surprise, and he pulls her in a little closer, pressing light little kisses all over her face.  Cheeks, eyes, nose, forehead, and then she reaches up to touch her mouth against his.  The kiss itself is soft, but he can taste the desperation it’s meant to convey, so he maneuvers them both back towards her bed, both his hands sliding to the collar of her shirt.  He gathers the fabric in his fists, wishes he was strong enough to rend the fabric.

“Armitage, please…” she murmurs, her little hands suddenly wrapped around his, “Even… even if it’s just this one time.”

“Of course, Sweetling,” he whispers, the petname coming to him and rolling off his tongue so naturally that it defies belief.  Instead of thinking too deeply about that, he kisses her again, murmuring against her lips, “Anything I can do to make it stop.”

He kisses her again as he unzips her shirt, pushing it over her shoulders so that it slides down her arms and falls to the floor.  He runs light fingertips over her bare skin, feels her shiver under his touch, and he bends to kiss her neck as her hands cover his, guiding them to the waistband of her pants.  He deftly unfastens the button and zipper then, gently guiding the fabric over her hips and then letting them fall down her thighs and calves so that she can kick them off.  He reaches under her ass, lifts her by her thighs and then sets her down on her bed so that he can take off his own shirt.  She’s watching him with awe and naked hunger in her eyes, and then she looks away, her expression suddenly stricken.  He steps forward, settles on his knees on the bed, putting a hand down by her hip and putting his fingers under her chin to get her attention and guide her back to him.

“Look at me, please, Sweetling,” he murmurs, pressing a soft kiss to her cheekbone, “Please.”  He needs her to look at him if he’s going to go through with this, needs her to be present and real and with him if he’s going to do this and not regret it.

When she opens her eyes and looks up at him, he smiles and pulls her closer to him.  Her skin is warm and soft, smooth against his, but her tears are hot and wet.  She lifts a hand to brush away the tears, but he gets there first, gently catching her tears on his fingertips and wiping them away before letting his fingers just rest against her smooth, lovely cheek.

“When do you leave?” she asks, her voice soft.  He frowns, pressing his lips together, unsure of whether he wants to answer, but then he remembers how much they both need the honesty.

“Tomorrow,” he responds, and she turns away, trying to pull away from him.  He catches her before she can escape, feels guilty that he didn’t tell her before.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispers, sounding pained, and he feels a wave of self-loathing for not saying something sooner.

“You never asked,” he murmurs, and then her arms are snaking around his waist and pulling him closer to her, cinching tight around his body like she can keep him from leaving if she only hangs on to him hard enough.  He kisses her again, rifling his fingers through her hair, crooning softly as he strokes his hair and tries to soothe her.

“Do you still want to do this?” he asks after several minutes have passed and her grip on him has loosened slightly.

“Yes,” she says without hesitation, and then her voice is heavy with sorrow as she says, “I just… I wish… I wish we could’ve found each other sooner.”

“We found each other at the right time,” he replies, brushing his lips lightly against hers, a featherlight touch, “I don’t regret one moment of our time together.  We’ll find each other again, even if it’s not in this life.”  He finds that he means it, though he’s never had many beliefs about an afterlife, but the idea of never finding her again isn’t something he can tolerate.

Her hands press against his chest, pushing him backwards onto her bed so that she can straddle his hips.  Obligingly, he falls back onto the mattress, pliant and cooperative, and then she pauses, sitting on his hips and looking down at him with an expression full of wonder that turns dreamy after a moment, and then darkens.

She curls her fingers into the band of his underwear before he can say anything, pulling them down over his hips and shimmying them under herself.  She pushes them down over his thighs, her hands soft against his skin, and he kicks them off onto floor with all their other clothing.  His underwear is no sooner gone before he settles his hands on her hips, runs them up her sides, thumbs sliding over her stomach, up and over her ribs to her chest.  He unclasps her bra, helps her pull it off her shoulders, and then he reaches for her panties.  To his surprise, she stops him, putting a hand over his and using the other to pull them aside for him.  His cock throbs at the sight of her naked pussy, pouting and sweet, but she’s looking at his cock and he twists his hand under hers to pull it forward and show her how to stroke him.  She’s as hesitant as he expected her to be.

“Am I the first?” he asks, and she bites her lip and nods, and he smiles gently, lets go of her so that he can reach up, slide his hands up her silky back and pull her down on top of him so that he can kiss her.  She has to let go of him, but he doesn’t mind as he kisses a soft trail from her mouth to her jaw to her neck.

“I love you,” she says hurriedly, like she has to say this before it’s too late, “I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone else.”

He has to close his eyes and breathe to control himself, but when he opens them again, they still fill with tears as he whispers, “I love you too.”  

He traces light fingertips down her ribs, her stomach, over the lace of her panties and then between her thighs, gently running over her clit before he slides two fingers into her.  She’s wet enough that he sinks in up to his knuckles immediately and she’s tight around him, tightening further around his fingers with nervousness.  She whimpers when he curls them inside her, flexing his hand and bringing his thumb into play, using it to firmly rub her clit.  She moans against his collarbone and shivers, making soft, desperate little noises, hips jerking as he purposely pushes her to the edge.

“Cum for me,” he urges her softly, “Cum for me, let me feel you.”

She orgasms fast, clenching around his fingers and soaking his palm with cream, her moan choked as he applies more pressure with his thumb and continues rubbing her clit, encouraging her to ride out the waves of pleasure and then easing back on the stimulation as she pants and shudders and comes down from the natural high of the hormones.  He pulls his hand free, intending to suck her cum off his fingers, but her shaking fingers close around his cock and she sits up and rises on her knees, guiding him to her cunt.  Her panties have slipped and she has to push them aside again, but then she’s rocking back and down and easing the head of him into her.  The heat and wetness envelops the tip of his cock, squeezing gently, and he can’t stop himself from moaning loudly, hands flying to her trembling thighs as he tries desperately to control himself.

She takes him slowly at first, and then her hands are resting on his thighs as she tries to ease herself down a little further.  He reaches up and puts a hand on the small of her back, and then she sinks down three inches all at once and she sobs, her nails digging into his thighs as she lets herself down further.  All at once, she’s sitting flush on his hips, the entire length of him inside her, and she seems a little dazed.  She looks surprised when he pushes himself up and adjusts her in his lap, and then he grips her hips and thrusts up into her, grinding against her, knowing that at this angle it will stimulate her clit.  She gasps with the pleasure of it, and then she’s draping her arms over his shoulders and leaning forward to kiss him as he continues thrusting up into her.  He’s panting between kisses, and he nips her lip, hears her whine for him.

“I love you,” he growls quietly, nipping her bottom lip again, eager for any noise she might make, wanting to burn every one of them into his memories, “By the gods, I’ve never loved anything more.”  He tightens his fingers on her hips, guiding her according to his rhythm until her thighs are shaking and she’s letting out sharp little keens with every thrust.  He’s fucking her fast now, and he presses his forehead to hers, feels her wind her fingers in his hair in response, tugging at it while he grinds against her.

“Look at me, Sweetling,” he whispers breathlessly, “Look at me when you cum.”

She’s staring into his eyes as he adjusts, sliding one hand down between the two of them, rubbing her clit in hard, fast little circles until her orgasm hits, drenching his cock in her cum so that it slips in and out of her easy.  She’s still moaning as he chases his own orgasm, growling as he thrusts as fast as he can into her twitching, pulsing cunt.  She’s still clenching around him as he thrusts up into her as deep as he can go, pulling her as close as he can as he empties himself into her, growling into her ear.

They stay like that for a long time, until he can feel their mingled cum dripping back down his soft cock and onto his balls, and then he gets his arms under her thighs and lifts her off his lap and tucks her under the covers.  She’s not all there at first, and if he were being honest, neither is he, but as he pulls her in against his body, she rolls in his arms to face him.  He pulls her closer, kisses the top of her head.  Reality sets back in eventually, encroaching on the soft, warm bubble they’ve created, and she starts to cry against his chest, clinging to him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers against her hair, “I never wanted to hurt you like this.”

She doesn’t respond.

He stands on the bridge, overseeing the operations of the Finalizer and the rest of the Order.  He takes a kind of fierce joy in executing his duties well, in knowing that he’s far surpassed what his instructors at the academy believed him capable of, surpassed even what his father thought he was capable of, though the man would never acknowledge that.  But there’s something hollow about his joy, and thinking of the academy always recalls his last night there and the girl he spent it with.  He’s never said “I love you” to another person since though he’s had other bed partners.  Nothing has ever matched what he felt for her, nothing compares to the third year gala and the way they danced in the fountains that night.

He checks her file occasionally, watched the notations being added to her records.  She’s done well, now a general herself and in command of a Star Destroyer.  The Subjugator is smaller than the Finalizer, but it’s a solid ship deserving of a good commanding officer.  He wonders if she’s disappointed by it the way she was disappointed by the Eclipse, if for different reasons.  Have her ambitions grown with her?

“Sir, the Subjugator is passing.  Do you want us to hail her?”

He’s looking at the lieutenant, but in his mind’s eye, he’s seeing the drenched girl in the seafoam dress, her circlet still sparkling in her wet hair as she looks up at him after he’s asked if she would follow him to hell and back.

_ “Yeah, I would.” _

“No,” he says tightly, folding up his memories and tucking them away again, “Keep to the schedule.  How long until Commander Ren’s shuttle is due?”

**Author's Note:**

> I was just going to do one section of this, but K suggested that I should do the entire thing from Armitage's POV so I did. Have some more sads!
> 
> I hope that if you enjoyed this that you'll leave kudos or a comment. As always, you can find me on tumblr [here.](http://magpieminx.tumblr.com)


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